A not so great Gatsby

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born in the Midwest, but much of his image is tied up with his time at Princeton University. It was there that he picked up much of the insight into America's class structure that led him to write such classics as "The Great Gatsby."

I have been thinking of that novel ever since I first met another intriguing character with ties to Princeton, the township if not the university. That would be Guy James, who was in the headlines again last week after Congo the dog pounced on a person for the second time within a year.

In the most recent case, the victim was James' 75-year-old mother-in-law. Congo and three other German shepherds left the woman with various lacerations after an attack Tuesday afternoon. By the next morning James had had them all put down.

In the prior case, Congo led a pack of dogs that inflicted 96 bites on Giovanni Rivera, a day laborer from Honduras who was helping to prepare the 10-acre James estate for a party of presumably Gatsbyesque proportions.

As Fitzgerald famously observed, the rich are different from you and me. If I had witnessed my dogs mauling some minimum-wage worker, I would have sympathized with the victim. Not James. He embarked on a public-relations campaign to portray himself and Congo as the victim of overzealous officials who wanted to dispatch the dog. The campaign became wildly successfully after the drive-time radio team "The Jersey Guys" fell for James' account of the incident.

Also falling for the tale was the well-meaning but credulous Neil Cohen. The Democratic assemblyman introduced "Congo's Law," a bill that would have loosened up controls on vicious dogs. This being Jersey, the committee approved that thoroughly nutty bill by a unanimous vote. Afterward I got talking to Guy James and his brother, Roy. I asked Guy James what he did for a living. "I'm in the stock market," he replied.

"So am I," I said. "I've got a 401(k). But what do you do for a living?"

He would say only that he is "a businessman." As for his brother, Roy James runs On-Target Staffing, a temp agency that until recently had an office at 201 Mott St. in Trenton. It was at that office that Rivera, an illegal alien from Honduras, was hired to work at the James estate.

When I later had a telephone interview with Rivera, he confirmed that he was in fact not in the country legally and did not have a Social Security number at the time he was hired by On-Target. Yet Rivera was paid on the books by the firm, according to his lawyer, Kevin Riechelson.

I then got talking with Star-Ledger reporter Brian Donohue, who in 2005 wrote an extensive expose on temp agencies showing how some of them provide undocumented workers with documents. Last year the feds raided a temp agency in Baltimore and arrested 69 people on immigration status violations. So I wondered if the Rivera case was an isolated incident at On-Target or part of a pattern.

Soon the Congo case fell out of the news, however, and I moved on to other nutty stories. But when news of Congo's latest attack broke on Wednesday, I happened to be in Trenton. So I took a drive over to 201 Mott St.

When you think of a temp agency, you may think of a gleaming building where white-shirted clerks and prim secretaries shuttle out to offices.

Instead I found a tiny storefront in the middle of a heavily Latino part of the Chambersburg section. There was a worker there doing some cleanup. He told me that On-Target had recently moved to a different location.

The next day I did a bit of research online. I found out that before the site at 201 Mott was occupied by On-Target Staffing, it was occupied by a different temp agency called Impact Personnel. And the owner of Impact Personnel was none other than Guy James. By the way, he's an immigrant, but unlike Rivera he came from Israel rather than Central America.

I wanted to learn more about this fascinating tale, so I called Guy James on Friday. But the man who is so ebullient with the media when talking about Congo became uncharacteristically reticent when talking about temp agencies.

"Yes, I owned Impact Personnel," he said. "Why are you even asking?"

Just curious. I was curious about a lot of things involving temp agencies. I had a lot of questions involving how an illegal alien could happen to have been hired by On-Target.

"I have no more comments," said Guy James.

Fitzgerald was right. The rich are different from you and me. When there's a big party at my place, only the burgers end up with bite marks.

Knucklehead alert: If you are going to comment on this piece, please avoiding repeating many of the errors that have cropped up in prior distorted accounts. These include:

1. The victim was not a landscaper, as has been widely reported. He was there to do various odd jobs about the house, including power-washing it. He did not arrive in a landscaping truck. He arrived in a car that was driven by a man he identifies as his immediate supervisor.

2. The men did not arrive early. They arrived on time.

3. The victim exited the car upon being told to do so by the driver, who was his immediate boss on the job. The order came in response to the arrival of Elizabeth James, who was the legal owner of the dogs and who therefore could have been reasonably expected to control them.

4. Even though the dogs belonged to Elizabeth James but they did not end the attack until her husband came onto the scene three minutes into it.

If you believe any other version of the story, please cite your sources.

Also, if you are one of those knuckleheads who believes that the dogs were somehow "protecting" the dogs' owners from illegal aliens, ask yourself why the agency in question hired an illegal alien. You may keep these reflections to yourself.

Please keep all remarks civil and free of insulting language. Rude posts will be removed by Blogdor the Terminator.

And it would be nice if you showed some indication that you have read "The Great Gatsby."